Read extensively on US pacification efforts in South Vietnam, it was rather surreal what they did, most of it did nothing but antagonize the peasants. The command, can't remember its acronym, relied on the elitist and highly corrupt ruler class for advice, with predictable results. They also applied methods used in the Philippines. And I kept wondering why they didn't listen to people on the ground instead. I'm sure you'll be a better human resource than all that put together.

Just have to ask this question: isn't hobnobbing with US government agencies going to get you into trouble, considering the, uh, recent events?

New post

You cannot teach a donkey to play the piano!

/.../ unless Western governments can peel away say AMAL or start building them up as a semi-palatable rival network....

Hm. This made me remember an editorial I recently read, by someone who is a former Israeli government adviser on "Shi'a affairs". He suggests basically the same thing, only in a grander scheme to permanently marginalize Hizbullah, but dresses it up like a "moderate muslims" thing, almost lionizing Berri. Not to mention he starts off by assuming that Hizbullah's infrastructure & fighting capacities would be eliminated at the end of the war... It's so simplistic, I remember thinking that if that's the kind of people who advise the Israelis, well, no wonder they stumbled into this mess.

But still, the idea is intriguing, and certainly it would take some kind of realistic positive engagement like this to undercut Hizbullah's support in the long run. So, if someone with a better grasp of Lebanese politics than I would jot down a few words on how feasible some kind of western (US, possibly France and tacitly Israel) alliance with Amal to counterbalance Hizbullah is, that would be very helpful. And what their relations and relative strength is, etc.

For good or bad, I have a creepy feeling that this is an idea that could catch on like brushfire with the usual Mideast debate suspects in the USA: it all looks so neat and clever, and promises such a very happy ending.

Such a thing would never work for two big reasons and several smaller reasons. First of all, the US has the reverse Midas touch in the ME: everything they touch turns to crap. If there is one thing that the US does well in the ME, it is discrediting and marginalizing potential friends and sympathizers through association. US has so little credibility that anyone who is associated with the US immediately dies a horrible political death. A recent poll from the Beirut Center for Research and Information highlights how little trust Lebanese Shia have for the US; a question was asked, "Do you believe that the United States plays the role of the honest mediator in this war?" and 94.4% said No while only 3.7% said Yes. The kind of support advocated can't be hidden; like the Lincoln Group deal, these things always bubble up to the surface which will ensure that the whole affair will end badly for all involved.

Also, Hizbollah is so popular right now that nothing is going to knock them down in the short to medium term. The Shia are as close to 100% behind him as I've ever seen a group behind someone. 96. 3% of Shia answered Yes to the question, "Do you support the confrontations carried out by the resistance against the Israeli aggression against Lebanon?" Nasrallah could eat a baby on al-Manar and he'd only lose a couple percent. Therefore, even if the US had a stellar reputation and had brilliant policy makers and field operators to impalement these brilliant policies(none of which they have), they still wouldn't have much success dividing the Shia people from Hizbullah.

Furthermore, Birri(who is as much of a corrupt and unlovable scumbag as any Lebanese warlord) would not turn on Hizbullah; he's an experienced politician who knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him at the order of fickle and inept American masters. Amal is a small shell of what it once was. In the last election, Amal probably would not have gained a single seat had it not been for their alliance with Hizbullah. Sometimes I wonder why Hizbullah bothers to keep propping up Amal though I suspect it's like when Microsoft propped up Apple in the late 90's: maintain a token alternative so that you don't get nailed for monopoly.

Given Amal's weakness, it's not going to go out on political limbs by pursuing deeply unpopular policies(pro-US policies) that would endanger the few core followers they have left. If anything, Amal is going to try to out-Hizbullah Hizbullah, like when they joined the fighting against Israel to ride the coat-tails of the resistence. The bottom line is that asking Amal to do America's bidding is like asking the Democratic Party of Utah to endorse strict gun control in its platform because the French want them to.

Funny how the only business posts that get comments are one's with something superficially political to whank on about.

Just have to ask this question: isn't hobnobbing with US government agencies going to get you into trouble, considering the, uh, recent events?

No. I'm just giving paid advice. They cut a check, I give them a white paper (well not me personally, I am part of the package). It's their money.

As to the Israeli fantasy of creating a competitor to Hezbullah politically, friendly to them, well that's typical Israeli thinking.

However, that was not my point. I was commenting on how to make reconstruction work competitively, not the politics. Djuha's longish comment supra appears to follow the same misreading.

To sum up in re peeling off AMAL, the context was rebuilding, not political strategy. As for making it work, well, I differ. Western power backing (financing) for building a network - not going head to head politically with Hezbullah might indeed work in a long run, although I don't see this as particularly likely, ultimately useful or something that the Americans in particular would have the savoir faire to do.

People are not as stupid as to think sheepishly that just because some western donor is funding some reconstruction, the western country in question is suddenly turning into an ally in the fight against the country which caused the destruction in the first place. They would probably gladly pocket the money and support the resistance regardless. It's not as though some tsunami hit Lebanon - people remember who bombed them, who supplied those bombs and who found the bombing to be in self-defence.

Funny how the only business posts that get comments are one's with something superficially political to whank on about.

All right, you whiner. I'm downloading all those frigging World Bank things & will give them a read today, okay?

I disagree: loyalties in Lebanon - as an honest Leb will tell you - are a highly saleable commodity.

That said, of course short term at best American spending - no matter the channels - is about managing their downside; that is mitigating their disastrous performance to date and showing care and concern, as it were. Blood money if you will.

Win allies? Not particularly, mitigate dislike, possible.

However, let me say yet again: my post was about effective networks and loyalty building , not roadmapping a Foreign Policy for the US of A. Simply put, it was to highlight the importance of the Hezbullah grassroots network and the particularly motivated & disciplined quality, which will automatically trump efforts passing through weaker institutions.

Grassroots and human resources are the key, but the logic of the current ideology in Washington produces the exact opposite conclusion. To them, giant for-profit development companies with no connection to the locale know best. To them, profits are far, far removed from actual achievements on the ground. The bankruptcy of the Washington approach is apparent not only in the spectacular failure of US reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Mississippi and Louisiana where insurgencies and cultural issues can't be blamed for a lack of progress.

"Contracting pyramids" are the result when American refusal to invest in local actors. As a member of your much loved left anti-globo droolers aptly put it,

Hezbollah has access to both bulldozers and intelligence assets, unlike FEMA, who neither owns equipment nor has the capability to find out who does. FEMA operates on the principle that a team of monkeys randomly typing for an infinite amount of time will eventually bang out the complete works of Shakespeare. In their adaptation, an infinite number of randomly issued contracts will eventually result in locating a company which owns heavy equipment – a theory which led to garbage removal being contracted to AshBritt's at $23 per cubic yard, who subcontracted it to C&B Enterprises, who subcontracted it to Amlee Transportation, who subcontracted it to Chris Hessler Inc, who subcontracted it to Les Nirdlinger for $3 per cubic yard. I don't know what possessed me (no pun intended) to do the math on that, but for the record, it's a 666% markup.

See thisA CorpWatch report summary for more examples of how the Washington reconstruction philosophy manages to waste money and cut out local people and companies.

My question is whether the failure of the US system and the apparent success of the Hezbollah system means that corporations and neo-liberal institutions inherently suck at reconstruction/development or could it work given the proper human resources, local consultation, and a halfway competent leadership?

Primo, there is a confusion of rather different issues:
(i) Competence
(ii) Ideology
(iii) Nature of specific projects.

I don't need some leftist NGO with ideological blinders to tell me about reconstruction, I was part of Iraqi projects - private sector driven ones, and we had plenty of exposure to the idiocy of statist politically driven projects. Not that state backed projects have to be "statist" mind you, initiatives were proposed (indeed, I discussed them on my blog, you can search the livejournal archives) that would have enabled a more local market driven approach. A combination of venality, ideology and self-delusion with a more than faint colonialist taint sank them. And Katrina has fuck all to do with Iraq, mind you (other than the American administration seems to be particularly incompetent and venal, even domestically).

The issues in re Iraq were indeed top-down and too focused on outsider-driven, and highly politically conceived projects.

That is not an indictment of, to use Left moron talk, "neo-Liberal institutions" - it is an indictment of a Statist and quasi-colonial outsider driven projects.

In real corporate land (that is the real liberal economy) - not government contracting land which is not liberal, but statist - everyone understands you need local knowledge, local expertise as well as outsider expertise and systems to assist governance.

Truly market driven initiatives always reach down and figure out what the local market requires - when own equity is on the line, its de rigueur. Pissing away government money where your contractor has ideological -and political/bureaucratic- rules that have fuck-all to do with the market and liberal market approaches.

Indeed, actual liberalism disdains Statist approaches, even those dressed up in pseudo-market clothes for this very reason.